


thats just wasteland, baby

by spiderbishop



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, I dont know how to tag, Kinda, M/M, Neighbors, Strangers to Lovers, jesper goes to uni, jesper is a dudebro, maybe? - Freeform, they are both dumb kinda, wylan doesnt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 18:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20376022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderbishop/pseuds/spiderbishop
Summary: wylan and jesper are locked out of their apartments.they become friends, kinda.





	thats just wasteland, baby

Admittedly, Wylan was not a very strong guy. That’s okay for him, he never needs to use force anyways, so he doesn’t mind his noodle arms much. 

His lack of strength  _ was  _ inconvenient sometimes, though. Like when he needed to open a jar, or right now, when he was locked out of his apartment and trying to force the damn door open.

His shitty apartment was located in a small town, close enough to the big city where he worked, and like every other building there, it was almost a hundred years old. The locks didn’t work most of the time, and Wylan always had to try extra hard to open the door at night for some reason. He was almost 100% sure that the building was haunted and the ghosts hated him.

So when he arrived home on a saturday night after spending all day in the public library, he wasn’t surprised to find that his door wouldn’t open.

He  _ was  _ surprised, however, to find his neighbor sitting in the staircase next to Wylan’s apartment door. He was extremely tall and lean, dark-skinned, and obviously drunk out of his mind.

“Hey there, little guy” said the boy, looking at him with a smile “Can’t open that door?”

It was kinda obvious that Wylan couldn’t open the door, especially because he had been trying for at least five minutes without any luck. He hadn’t said much to his neighbor, just a simple greeting. Admittedly, he wasn’t very fond of any of his neighbors; he was polite with everyone, but most people who lived there didn’t have  _ manners _ -like the old guy in 302 who looked at him like he was a cockroach when Wylan said hi to him. God, he hated that guy. The rest of them were okay, mostly, but he wasn’t the type of person to just make friends with everyone, so outside of polite greetings and goodbyes, he hadn’t talked much to anyone in the building.

That’s why he was surprised when the guy started talking to him like they were friends.

“ _ Dude _ , I hate when that happens. The other day I brought my friends here for game night and we had to wait for hours before the landlord would drag his ass here and literally break the lock so we would be able to come in. Game night was fire though, we had pizza, we had snacks, I won at Mario Kart… Oh and we had pizza! That pizza was  _ so _ good. Have you tried pizza from the pizzeria just around the block?”

“Uh… no?”

Very eloquent, Wylan.

“ _ Dude, _ no way! We  _ have  _ to go there someday” Wylan scoffed, so his neighbor was a dudebro. At least he was friendly and kept him company, that was good.

“We?”

Wylan finally accepted defeat and sat on the floor, resting his back on the stupid door. Even if he called his landlord, he wouldn’t come until morning -because he was a shitty person like that- so he would most likely have to sleep in the cold, hard floor of the haunted hallway. Great.

“Yeah! You know what they say: bros who get locked out together stay together!” said the tall boy with a big smile lighting up his face “Besides, you look kinda cool, little guy. What’s your name?”

“Wylan. Yours?”

“I’m Jesper! And I’m really sleepy. And drunk. And broke.”

Wylan laughed, amused with Jesper’s drunk blabbering. He seemed friendly enough, maybe it was because he was drunk, but who cares? At least he wasn’t alone.

Jesper started talking about how he had lost his keys somewhere that day, and Wylan was only half listening, half looking at his neighbor --and new friend maybe?

So. He was cute. Jesper obviously knew that, because every cute boy  _ knows _ he is cute, especially jocks like he seemed to be.  _ And  _ he was funny.  _ And _ nice.  _ And _ he was probably very straight, too. So that was not ideal, since Wylan wouldn’t have minded to go on a date with him, but it was fine, he could have an attractive friend and not develop a crush on him; he had done it before, and he’ll do it again, no matter how adorable Jesper’s dimples were.

He got up again and tried to open the door to distract himself. He was damned if he was going to sleep on the floor without a fight.

“... and like, I really tried to jump as high as I could to get that balloon before it flew away but I obviously failed and the little girl started crying even  _ more, _ and it was giving me a headache so I tried to help her find her mom as fast as I could but I still spent like fifteen minutes holding the girl’s hand while she cried her lungs out until we finally found her mom and I could finally get to the Dreg’s party.”

Wylan laughed at Jesper’s bizarre stories while he tried to open the damn door again and again and again. Suddenly, he heard Jesper gasp.

“Dude,  _ bro,  _ I had an idea!”

Wylan looked at him with a raised eyebrow, like he was asking ‘what now?’ without talking.

“Try a kick.”

“What?” replied Wylan, confused.

“Kick it, kick the door.” 

“Wh- That won’t do anything though?”

“Try… try kicking it.”

So Wylan did. He took all the strength he had in his body —which wasn’t much, to be honest— and he kicked the door as hard as he could. It did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Jesper sounded impressed though.

“Wow” Jesper had gotten up from the steps to plop down again on the floor next to Wylan’s “More torque than I expected. You’ve got an impressive… torque to size ratio.”

Wylan snorted —and regretted it immediately _ . Who even snorted nowadays, that was so nerdy. _

“Thank you?”

The short boy wasn’t going to stop trying, even if kicking it wouldn’t work  _ something _ had to. Jesper nodded at his efforts, looking at his focused face in silence.

“This is fun. Being locked out together. We really should hang out more” spoke Jesper, after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah, sure; I mean we live in the same floor so-“ 

A click. The most beautiful sound Wylan had ever heard. The door opened and the biggest smile appeared on his face.

“Fuck yeah! I did it! I fucking did it! Did you  _ see  _ that, Jesper!? I did it!” Wylan was practically yelling and surely woke up someone in the building with his voice, but in that moment he couldn’t have cared less. 

“Hell yeah, buddy!” replied Jesper, bringing a hand up so Wylan could highfive it.

An uncomfortable silence fell between the two. What was Jesper going to do now? Sleep alone in the hallway? Wylan felt bad about that; Jesper was a good guy, and it wasn’t his fault he had lost his keys somewhere. So he decided to do something reckless.

“So. You wanna come in?”

“Wait, what?” asked Jesper, visibly confused expression on his face.

Wylan started playing nervously with his earring.

“I mean, the landlord won’t come until tomorrow morning and I couldn’t sleep if I knew you were out here sleeping on the floor when there’s a perfectly good sofa in my apartment you can use.”

Jesper grinned — _ those dimples. god.—  _ and did something that left Wylan breathless. He threw his arms around the short boy and embraced him in a tight hug.

A really, really tight hug.

“Jesper?”

“Yes?” said the boy, still holding him.

“I can’t breathe”

Jesper’s warmth left him in less than a second, and the dark-skinned boy smiled again at him, this time apologetically.

“Sorry, I got excited.” spoke Jesper, taking a couple steps back to give Wylan space “Thank you though, dude! You are so nice.”

Wylan mumbled a quick  _ no problem  _ and went quickly inside of the darkness of his apartment, partly because he was super tired and partly because his cheeks were extremely red. He finally found the light switch and turned the lights on. His apartment wasn’t impressive, everything was clean and organized, nothing expensive or new. He had a couple of plants and instruments —just his flute and his violin, nothing much— and some pictures of landscapes he had taken when he was traveling. It felt like home, though, so it was good enough for him.

“Nice place you got” said Jesper, sitting on the brown sofa where he was going to sleep that night.

“Thanks” replied Wylan, grabbing his pajamas and rushing to the bathroom “Be right back.”

The reality of what he had said sank in once he closed the bathroom door. He had invited a boy to sleep in his apartment. It didn’t matter if they were going to sleep separately, or if the boy in question was probably straight; he just invited a stranger to sleep in his apartment. He could be killed, his precious instruments could be stolen, he could be kidnapped and sold to some human trafficker. Yes, Jesper seemed nice and all, but how could he even trust him? He had just met him an hour ago at most!

Wylan tried to take deep breaths and calm down.

He was doing something nice for his neighbor, and he knew that said neighbor — _ probably— _ wasn’t a creep. So he was fine. He was safe. Nothing to worry about.

He changed his clothes to his pajamas and finally came out of the bathroom, just to see Jesper was already passed out on the sofa. Wylan chuckled and grabbed and extra blanket, covering Jesper’s body with it. The blanket wasn’t big enough for Jesper’s tall body, it didn’t even cover totally his long legs, which was totally  _ not _ cute.

Wylan turned off the lights and threw himself into his bed, falling asleep almost instantly.

When he woke up the next morning, Jesper was already awake and maybe watching something on his phone. He wasn’t exactly quiet, and maybe that was what woke up Wylan in the first place.

He dragged himself out of bed, still in his baby blue pajamas and with messy hair, but it was 8am on a sunday, who cares? 

“Hi, neighbor!” said Jesper when he saw Wylan come out of his bedroom, too happy and bright. He had been drunk the night before, how could he be so happy this early in the morning? Why was he not lying on the sofa with a terrible headache?

Wylan grunted something that was close enough to a  _ hello _ and sat down on a chair. Jesper immediately left his phone on the table to talk with him.

“Thanks for letting me crash down here, bro. I wanted to treat you to some  _ thank-you  _ breakfast! I kinda wanted to order it right away but I don’t know what do you even like so I thought it would be nice if we went to the pizzeria down the street together. If you don’t like pizza or you don't wanna go out I can cook something you actually like, no problem”

“Pizza for breakfast? Is that a thing you do often?”

“I mean, I like pizza. So. Yeah.”

Wylan had to use all of his energy to smile.

“Sure, I’ll go, just let me get changed first.”

“Nice! No rush, take your time, dude!”

While Wylan got up and walked right back into his bedroom, his brain could only think about one thing:  _ it’s not a date it’s not a date it’s not a date. _

So, Wylan dressed accordingly to the not-a-date occasion. He put on the first hoodie he saw on the closet and some jeans and called it a day. Jesper was just being nice, no biggie.

He walked to the bathroom and washed his face. He was tempted to fix his hair properly but he reminded himself once again that Jesper was just his  _ bro _ and he didn’t need to impress his  _ bros  _ with his looks. 

He looked at himself in the mirror one last time.  _ You will not fuck this up _ , he told himself,  _ Jesper is a cool guy and you are going to be his friend and not catch feelings for him, no matter how cute he looks or how funny he is. He is only your friend. _

When he finally — _ finally—  _ came out of the bathroom, ready to go out, he found Jesper sitting in a chair. His leg was bouncing too much, and he recognized that sign as a nervous one. Hm.

“You look nice” said Jesper with the biggest smile ever.  _ Do not look at his dimples, you are stronger than that. _

“Thanks, you look the same as yesterday”

Jesper laughed at his comment, getting up.

“So, I look really handsome then?”

_ Yes _ , Wylan wanted to say. “No, you are just wearing the same clothes” said Wylan instead.

“I can’t go home until I talk with the landlord! And your clothes are too small for me! Don’t judge me.” 

Wylan laughed and grabbed his keys and his phone, walking to the door with Jesper following him mumbling something.

“So” said Jesper, leaning into the wall before Wylan could open the door. He had a stupid grin drawn on his lips.  _ (Wylan wanted to kiss him.) _

“So?” asked Wylan, very eloquently.

“Are you ready?”

“Uh. Sure? I’m starving.” said the short boy, kind of confused. Why was Jesper being so weird all of a sudden?

Wylan opened the door and held it open so Jesper could come out. 

“Great! Then it’s a date!”

_ What. _

**Author's Note:**

> this was based on youcantcancelquidditch tumblr post!
> 
> sadly, i cant find it so i'll link it once i do


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